The Verona City Council this morning approved the text of a collaboration agreement with the Ministry of Culture - Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio for the provinces of Verona, Rovigo and Vicenza. The agreement initiates the administrative process for a shared enhancement of the Courtyard and Juliet’s House, with the aim of ensuring a more qualified management of the site to improve its accessibility, safety and overall visitor experience.
This is the first concrete step toward an agreement that has been awaited for decades, aimed at renewing the way the Juliet Courtyard, visited daily by thousands of tourists from all over the world, is enjoyed. This agreement marks the beginning of a complex and articulated path, which will lead to the redevelopment of the area, making it possible to reduce congestion on Via Cappello, regulate tourist flows and introduce a system of access with compulsory reservation and ticket.
The approved agreement represents a preliminary but indispensable stage from the authorization point of view, which commits the municipality to launch, within six months, a competition of ideas to elaborate an innovative and shared vision of the monumental complex, one of the most visited places in the city. The proposal should stand out for its communicative and cultural quality, include the redevelopment of the Courtyard and improve its accessibility.
The Municipality and the Superintendency will collaborate to define a new visitor route for Juliet’s House and Courtyard, in agreement with the co-owners. The project includes an entrance from Piazza Navona, passing through the foyer and some rooms on the ground floor of the Teatro Nuovo, including the ridotto, with a direct connection between the Theater and the Courtyard, based on a coherent and shared cultural proposal.
The issue of management of Juliet’s Courtyard has remained unresolved for more than two decades due to difficulties in reconciling the interests of the various parties involved. In fact, the Courtyard is jointly and undividedly owned by the City of Verona, owner of Juliet’s House, and the owners of the properties that overlook it, including the Società Teatro Nuovo Srl.
The agreement calls for the City of Verona to hold a competition of ideas within six months to come up with a new cultural and communicative vision for the complex and to redevelop the Courtyard. In addition, it will have to remove signs of urban decay, carry out, after sharing with the co-owners, the interventions resulting from the selected project, and proceed with the plant upgrading works of Juliet’s House. The goal is to start the new mode of access to the Courtyard, with compulsory reservation and ticketing, by autumn 2025, respecting the timeframe for set-up and authorization.
After the agreement with the Superintendence, two further key steps will follow. The first involves the approval by the City Council of the Regulations for the use of the Courtyard by the City, Teatro Nuovo Srl and other private co-owners, to regulate access and allow the Teatro Nuovo Company to manage theater and museum activities, guaranteeing security and surveillance. The second step involves the City Council’s approval of an additional agreement with Teatro Nuovo Srl and Fondazione Atlantide to move the entrance to the Courtyard from the Teatro Nuovo, with an exit onto Via Cappello, and to introduce an online booking system with an entrance ticket. Access from Via Cappello will still be guaranteed to residents, guests and businesses, as stipulated in the Regulations.
“Thanks to the cooperation of the owners, by networking, we have been able to share a path that is a historic achievement for the city and will allow for the safety of Via Cappello,” Mayor Damiano Tommasi stressed. “With this agreement we are taking a first concrete step toward a shared enhancement of the Courtyard and Juliet’s House, which will improve the visitor experience, strengthen the protection of the site and finally implement an idea that has been awaited for decades.”
“We would like to express our heartfelt thanks to the partners and the Board of Directors of the Teatro Nuovo, the Board of the Atlantis Foundation, the owners of the Courtyard property, and the professionals involved for the shared effort,” said Councillor for Culture, Tourism and Unesco Relations Marta Ugolini. “Their contribution and trust are indispensable to overcome historical impasses and to lay the foundations for a genuinely cultural enhancement of one of our city’s symbolic places.”
“For the first time we are putting down on paper one of the first operational steps, which is fundamental and prodromal to all the other subsequent steps already planned,” said Security Councillor Stefania Zivelonghi. “With today’s council resolution, the text of an agreement with the Superintendence has been sanctioned, which finally kicks off a path that has been worked hard for since we took office, so much so that I remember that the first experimentation, with the change of entrance, was made in December 2022. A historic achievement, complex to achieve not only because of the goals but because of the number of stakeholders involved. The real victory is that of having managed to combine the purpose of enhancing the place with the aspects of improving its enjoyment in serenity. Such a highly attractive place deserves to be used and enjoyed to the fullest by those who come here to visit. Right now it is not: not so inside, but especially outside where the increasingly long waiting lines on Cappello Street are well known. The solution came thanks to the cooperation of everyone, primarily the co-owners of the site, which has its own inherent complexity that we had to deal with.”
“The collaborative agreement with the ABAP Superintendency makes it possible to take a fundamental step toward a shared solution to a long-standing issue,” pointed out deputy mayor and councillor for Monumental Building and Cultural Heritage Barbara Bissoli, “a solution that effectively balances the public and private interests involved in the dutiful enhancement of the courtyard of Juliet’s House and the House itself, the most visited in Verona after the Arena, almost a secular pilgrimage destination inspired by the heroine of love par excellence.”
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| Verona, Juliet's Courtyard: the decades-long awaited agreement between the city and the Superintendence kicks off |
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